Around about this time yesterday, Wolff Olins unveiled their brand for the London 2012 Olympics. Predictably, the design community (and the rest) did it’s thing and went blogged like mad, revealing their almost universal dislike for it. My initial reaction agreed with them: My answer to the question What the bloody hell is that? was It’s bobbins, that’s what it is.

I’ve mellowed a bit towards it in the last 24 hours. I still don’t think it works — yet. It’s certainly new, different, fresh, innovative, shocking and all of the other things their mumbo jumbo says it is. Despite all that, it just doesn’t hold together as a standalone logo.

As part of the overall brand though, it works a lot better (you can see it in context at london2012.com). Over the next few years the brand is going to be used everywhere: On television, billboards, the interwebs, printed media — just about anywhere they can display it. As it becomes more pervasive we’ll get used to it, and if they go about it properly, maybe we’ll even grow to like it.

Despite all that, I’ll forever struggle to get past the Lisa Simpson image. Thanks Reddit.

Our local bike shop must love us. We can whinge about how they’ve never got anything useful in stock until the cows come home. But then Brett goes in there and buys himself a shiny new Cannondale Prophet (all the best people have them) and Stubacca lays down his hard earned for a GT iDrive 5 (in a fetching 80’s Honda Civic style metallic brown). They’ve got to be rubbing their hands together with glee.

What’s more, Owen (not that one) had gone out and got himself the mother of all hangovers (not from the bike shop though). What better excuse for us all to go out and play?

So we draged the bikes out, and after some extended faffing, set off. We spent the best part of six hours out there, riding through everything from blazing sunshine to howling gales and snow flurries. We grovelled up big hills and burned down twisting singletrack. We even stopped at the pub for a nice cup of tea.

We did about this many miles (I’m holding my hands about as far apart as they’ll go), so I’ve got that tired but satisfied glow this evening.

Biking rocks. Nuff said.

Plenty to catch up on since last time. I’m feeling exhausted as I write, so apologies if it goes a bit random.

The big news: I’ve moved house again. I’m sharing with Brett and Christian again, just like old times. This time though, we’ve bought the place. It’s a nice early-Victorian maisonette in the park area of Cheltenham. If you want/need to know where it is for some reason, drop me a line. It’s just begging for some DIY and we’ve already started re-decorating. Watch this space for some of our more interesting adventures…

Yesterday Anton, Brett and myself drove up to Cwmcarn in south Wales with the downhill bikes, to have a play on a secret track up there. It’s a hell of a push up the mountain and I don’t think we got the top section right at all – we got confused where a load of moto-crosser ruts converged. It was good fun making our way down the random stuff though. The highlight for me was the monster “straight” (lumps, bumps, ruts, rocks, roots, ace!) that feeds into a ludicrously fast bermed corner before spitting you out into a much shorter rock-strewn straight. Chasing Brett and Anton into there was mental, Anton seemed to be climbing all over the front of his bike trying to keep up with Brett. He got a bit over-confident on the steep stuff further down the course and dived headfirst off the side of the course into an awful lot of brambles, slicing his shins up nicely. Mmm, blood. I was annoyed at myself for not riding the evil steep bit (again) but generally had an ace time! I’ll have it next time…

I was absolutely knackered after that, which made it all the more difficult to get up at ludicrous o’clock this morning.

Garry swooped in to drive myself and Charlie all the way up to Llandegla for a blast around the trails there. To be honest I was a bit disappointed with the place. The trails had their high points (there were some nice corkscrews and berms to play on), but they just didn’t really “flow” for me. The black runs were quite fun, but nowhere near the awesome roller-coasters I’d been led to believe they’d be. I thought maybe it was just me, but the other two agreed and the comments in the visitors book seemed to back it up. Still, the place has got loads of potential – given some time to develop it further it could become great. We had fun regardless – after all we were out in the countryside playing on bikes and they quite clearly rock.

Man, I’m proper tired now. G’night!

Does anybody else think that a 431 word disclaimer is perhaps a little bit excessive?

Updated: It would appear that it’s a legal requirement now: Is your Company Website in breach of UK laws – specifically the 2007 Companies Act?

Some little scrotes tried to nick my bike from work today.

They sliced straight through the Kryptoflex cable, but thankfully the (very expensive) New York Lock defeated them. Luckily, Tim left work just as they were coming back for a second go, which scared them off.

The greedy buggers clearly wanted the whole bike though: Nicking either wheel would have been pretty easy after they’d cut through the cable lock. Thankfully they were too thick to figure that out.

I think I’ll be borrowing Brett’s uber-cheap “Probike” for the next few days…

On Saturday 6th January 2007, my granddad Dominic McDonnell passed away, after a mercifully brief battle with cancer.

On hearing the news, I jumped on a train home so I could be with the family. My grandmother and most of his children (including my mum) had congregated at his house in Woking: we spent the evening celebrating his life, reminiscing and sharing our favourite memories of him. It was very much the right thing to do.

A week and a half later, I headed back down south for the funeral. I’m not sure why, but I felt almost emotionally detached during the service. The church was absolutely packed with friends and family, many of whom I hadn’t seen for years. It wasn’t until we left the church and I had my arms around my younger sisters that I broke down, as we watched the hearse carry Granddad away. The cremation service the following day was lovely, with his children, Justin, Claire and Stephen all reading pieces about him.

It almost feels wrong to say it, but the parties we had after each service were great. It was good to catch up with all of the people I only ever see at the really big family events.

You may still be wondering why I’ve titled this piece “Boiled Eggs”. It’s because that’s my favourite memory. I don’t think I voiced it at the time.

When we were young, Alice & I would occasionally be dropped off at the grandparents for a weekend. Our mum & dad were usually off doing something silly like The National Rally on their classic bikes. Anyway, breakfast was always a highlight: Dominic had perfected the art of the soft-boiled egg. It came from the chickens they kept in the garden. It went in for four minutes. It never cracked prematurely. The soldiers were toasted to perfection. There’s probably an element of rose-tinted glasses, but that’s the way I remember it. Good times.

Obviously he was a lot more to me than just the man who taught me how to boil the perfect egg. It was my mother that pointed it out to me: I was probably a lot closer to him than I might have been if my father hadn’t died in my teenage years. Granddad was always a man I looked up to. He was so bright, talented and worldly wise, without ever being condescending.

I was looking through my collection and could only find one photo of him. I’ll have to get some more from the family. My little sister’s got a nice photo of the whole family from the day of the funeral.

I know, I know. I’ve been a bad little blogger. I’ve not been keeping you amused very much of late. The truth is I’ve just fallen out of the habit of writing regularly¹ and I’ve found it difficult to get myself back into the groove.

I’ve sat down umpteen times to write about something and just been completely unable to make any headway. I’ve started writing, thought “that’s complete crap” and just closed the browser. My in-built self censorship has got in the way a bit too: I’m quite shy by nature, so when a difficult subject comes along I can find it hard to talk openly about it, even with close friends and family. The same carries through to my writing, although to a lesser extent.

It’s not like there’s been nothing for me to write about. Plenty’s happened since I last wrote anything much about my life. There’s a couple of things I want to get out there over the next few days and hopefully that’ll kick me back into blogging. We’ll see.

1. It’s not just here either – my posts on mailing lists and fora have almost completely dried up too. Some might argue that it’s a good thing ;)

Sheila² got me: The object of the game is to reveal 5 things about you, which most readers probably don’t know, then nominate 5 friends to do the same.

So then, here’s five things you might not know about me:

1. My dad and I went to watch the Isle of Man TT several times on his classic bikes, including a Matchless G3LS (350cc single), an AJS 500cc twin and later a Honda CB750 (the rest of the family followed in an old VW Minibus). The Honda was my favourite at the time, though I look back on the 350 most fondly. The last time we went, the I.O.M. Steam Packet Company crashed one of their ferries into Douglas harbour. Joey Dunlop was a boyhood hero of mine, so seeing him win at the TT was pretty special.
2. At school we built a wall-climbing robot that got us second place in the local Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. It used compressed air and suction cups to climb up smooth surfaces. I did all the artwork – it was probably my first proper bit of design. Looking back, it was a bit rubbish. The awards were held at the old motor racing circuit at Brooklands in Surrey.
3. On the same day I had a look around the Sultan of Brunei‘s old private plane which was housed there. Very plush. A few years later at college, I became friends with Steve, who comes from Brunei. The plane was still at Brooklands when I visited an Auto Italia event with Owen & Anne a couple of years ago. The three of us finally made it out there for Steve’s wedding earlier this year.
4. I’m a founder member of the Kusatado Ninja and I’ve got the bright yellow jersey to prove it. We took turns “racing” mountain bikes round in circles for 24 hours. I use the term “racing” in the loosest possible sense – we didn’t do very well, but we had a great time burning round on bikes, burning on the blazing sunshine and getting high on RedBull. Wonderful.
5. When I was a kid, we used to live right on the River Wey, in Guildford. We had a large canvas-covered canoe that my dad, my sister and I would row up and down the navigation, carrying it around the locks and generally having a laugh. We had a big adventure one day after some particularly heavy rain. The current carried us for miles, we took some interesting detours through water-meadows (they take the overflow when the river floods) and nearly got dragged down the odd weir. In the end we had to phone my mum and get her to come and collect us in the minibus.

You know what? It was good fun reminiscing about that lot. Good times.

And with that I tag you Weon, Matt, Simon, Rich and other SimonAndy.